Wicked, the movie, opened recently, pitting Elphaba, the bad witch against Glinda, the good witch. It’s a prequel to The Wizard of Oz that explores the complexities of good and evil. Social media platforms are playing out a similarly themed story. Only it’s X (formerly known as Twitter) pitted against Bluesky Social.

As it grew increasingly obvious that Elon Musk’s vision of free speech on the X platform had turned into a cesspool of vitriol and misinformation, the great migration began. Many disenchanted with X’s “wickedness” first decamped to Meta Threads, hoping it would be a better place (and it is). But there’s too much suspicion about Meta’s domination plan with its cartel of popular apps (Instagram, WhatsApp, Facebook, and Threads) for it to beat Twitter.

Enter Bluesky. It’s aroma of “loftier mission” meets “building a better mousetrap.” Bluesky has been around for a while. Ironically, its roots are in a research project started at Twitter before Jack Dorsey sold the company to Elon Musk. When Donald Trump was elected President, aided by 200 million dollars from Elon Musk and his newfound status as Buddy in Chief, millions fled to Bluesky in the hopes of creating a more utopian social media platform. (You can find me at robinraskin.bsky.social). At the moment, it’s so sweet and inviting that it borders on treacly. There’s a euphoria and ever-so-hopeful tone infusing many of the posts.

Front facing, Bluesky doesn’t look much different than Threads or Twitter. But there are major architectural differences: 

• Twitter is owned and operated by a centralized corporation. Bluesky is built on the AT Protocol (Authenticated Transfer Protocol), which is decentralized. Users can move their accounts to live on Bluesky or other servers at their discretion, offering more control over the experience. 

• Twitter’s algorithms (like most other social platforms) are dictated to you. They’ll determine what you see. BlueSky tries to let you drive the algorithm. As you build your profile, you take a little personality test identifying what interests you. Then you can use “starter packs” – lists of other Bluesky subscribers created by other users – and make your own pack to share with others. Cnet discusses how to get started.

Decentralized architecture is important to the geekiest of us, but the Wicked storyline is all centered on Bluesky’s CEO, Jay Graber. She’s the Glinda of our story.

Graber represents a new generation with a kinder, less ruthless vision for social media. In her mid-thirties, her given first name, which is Lantian, literally means “Blue Sky” in Mandarin. The company is listed as a social benefit company, which is a corporation whose goals include making a positive impact on society. In an interview with CNBC she said that Bluesky’s open design is intended to give users the option of leaving the service with all of their followers. The business model is less clear. The site makes some money off of selling you a domain name, there’s talk of developers adding integrations, and no doubt creators will begin using it as a platform for their followers, too 

As I write, Bluesky has 22 million members, while Threads has 275 million and X has more than 550 million. I’m not going to tell you that it’s social platform nirvana. It’s exhausting to hunt for and rekindle with your fellow defectors. And few of us want yet another social media life to cultivate. Most of the posts I’ve seen on Bluesky are far from scintillating, but the hope is palpable. Lots of talk about leaving your toxic relationships behind, starting anew, and making new friends. The classic story of good triumphing over evil is a great social experiment, one that’s needed on social media now more than ever. 

Many conference planners don’t understand that attendees want to do two things: find connections and feel special. That’s hard to do at scale. Web Summit, recently held in Lisbon, does it by making badged areas of the show to help people feel special. According to this LinkedIn post from friend of VEG Jim Louderback, Web Summit had a special badge for just about everything except the line at the bathroom.

“Everyone's special!” writes Jim. “Investors, startups, grown companies, executives, just about every attendee has a special lounge. That makes everyone feel special, without everyone trying to cram into one VIP area. Different badges get access to different lounges.” 

Beginning on December 13th, it’s bye-bye hashtags on Instagram. You won’t be able to follow a hashtag and hashtags that you followed will no longer appear in your feed. That’s a radical change. My theory is that there’s an underlying motive behind the change.TikTok is already testing working with affiliate product links instead of hashtags (think Amazon, Walmart, etc.). I think that Instagram is also gearing up for brand affiliation. Both commencing the year of e-commerce driven social video.

Meta’s Video AI
Take a look at the incredibly beautiful AI-generated videos they’re making from simple text prompts over at Meta. High-definition videos at different aspect ratios with plenty of room for iteration produced from text prompts.

Event Winners
If events and conferences are what you wake up for, then look at the live and virtual awardees at this year’s Event Tech Live conference, which recently took place in London. 

Has Sphere Lost Its Luster?
It opened with much fanfare but its Q4 quarterly results declined from $151 to $127 Million. Could it be that the giant ball of vibrating chairs, incredible audio, and millions of LEDs is a once-and-done phenomenon? Or could it be that it’s too expensive to be an event venue for all but the top tier of events? Rumor has it that an hour can cost a cool million dollars. 

Netflix Got Punched, But It’s Only Round One
How was the Netflix-streamed fight between the retired 58-year-old Mike Tyson and 26-year-old creator-sensation and prizefighter Jake Paul? Depends on who you ask. Paul walked away with about $40 million. Tyson with $20 million. And Netflix with a gut punch. Technical problems plagued the fight – blurry and pixelated video, poor audio, spinning wheels, and sometimes just no service at all. Netflix is used to serving millions of viewers each day, all over the world. But 65 million simultaneous views proved to be too much. The State of Florida is suing Netflix on behalf of the 100,000 viewers who complained to them.

At least Netflix handled it better than the time when Elon Musk and Donald Trump went on X to chat. When things didn’t work on Twitter, Musk blamed the platform’s miserable performance on a hacker attack. Netflix has to “tackle” this problem before Christmas Day when it attempts to stream the NFL’s marquee football games featuring a halftime show by Beyonce. The TV networks are watching closely. As you might recall, they are masters of the art of handling millions of simultaneous viewers at Super Bowls. You know Netflix is working in overdrive this month.